Guantanamo changes too little, too late: Britain

[one...two...tree 2,762]

By Jane Sutton, Reuters

New U.S. rules for war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo fail to correct fundamental flaws that are undermining Western efforts to defeat global terrorism, the British government's top lawyer said on Monday.

"The changes made are too little and too late," Lord Goldsmith, Britain's attorney general and a longtime critic of the Guantanamo detention operation, told a meeting of the American Bar Association in Miami.

The U.S. Congress revised the tribunal system to try foreign suspected terrorists at Guantanamo last year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the original system created by President George W. Bush.

Goldsmith said he welcomed some of the changes, such as the decision not to use secret evidence that would not be shown to the accused, but that they did not go far enough to ensure fair trials.

Guantanamo remains a powerful symbol of injustice that not only hurts the United States' image but undermines international efforts to win the ideological war against global extremism, Goldsmith said.

"We have to show, in my view, against an al Qaeda narrative that all that the West does is designed to oppress Muslims, that our values are actually those of justice, tough and fearless but fair," Goldsmith said. "The presence of Guantanamo makes it so much more difficult to do this, for all of us."

Goldsmith won standing ovations from the American lawyers, some of whom have provided free legal aid to some of the 395 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives held indefinitely at Guantanamo for as long as five years.

The law group's governing body, the House of Delegates, adopted a resolution on Monday upholding the fundamental right to legal counsel even for those accused of reprehensible acts.

It was drafted in response to comments made by Charles "Cully" Stimson, a Pentagon official who ignited controversy by calling for a boycott of U.S. law firms that provide free representation to Guantanamo prisoners.

The Pentagon disavowed his remarks and Stimson later apologized and resigned. But lawyers at the meeting were still fuming at what they called the government's attack on the independence of the legal system and on the basic right to equal justice for all.

"We must be prepared to honor the rights of everyone, even the worst of us," said Neal Sonnett, chairman of the bar association's task force on the treatment of enemy combatants.

Goldsmith called Stimson's remarks "unjust, unacceptable and un-American."